


When Gawain First Kissed Him

by ConanDoylesCarnations



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christianity but only because it’s Britain in the Middle Ages, First Kiss, It's extremely self-indulgent I wrote it because I was sad, M/M, and it’s all to further the gay agenda anyway, it's queer rights, once again I've mined medieval literature for self-indulgent purposes, that's it that's the whole fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29182668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConanDoylesCarnations/pseuds/ConanDoylesCarnations
Summary: When Gawain first kissed him, Lancelot experienced an awful lot of thoughts and feelings.  Contrary to popular belief, thoughts and feelings, and lots of them, were very much the norm for Lancelot, who had nonetheless never yet grown used to them.
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	When Gawain First Kissed Him

When Gawain first kissed him, Lancelot experienced an awful lot of thoughts and feelings. Contrary to popular belief, thoughts and feelings, and lots of them, were very much the norm for Lancelot, who had nonetheless never yet grown used to them.

When Gawain first kissed him, the first thing Lancelot felt could only be compared to the feeling of walking, humble beneath its soaring rafters, into a great cathedral. Until that moment, such beauty had been unparalleled. Wafts of incense would thrum with the low harmonic murmur of psalms, tides of mathematical perfection reflecting the perfectly proportioned architecture of Creation. How the sunlight would flood through those enormous windows – so much glass all in one place, in such large, gloriously, purely-coloured pieces – tiling the floor with a giant replica of its image. If you walked under it, into the dazzling, swelling effulgence, you could stand in a scene from the Scripture, or under a saint. For a moment your own skin would be painted with that bright bold picture, and you would almost feel, through the warmth on your skin, the saint touch your soul, tenderly, _Benedictus benedicat_.*

When Gawain first kissed him, the next thing Lancelot wondered was whether the souls of two mortals could touch in that way. If they could, then surely that was what he was then feeling, his soul and Gawain’s twining together, caressing each other, kissing just as were their lips. If the soul of the mortal were part of God, issued forth from Him and destined, all being well, to return to Him, like to like, the great rule of Creation and its Creator – could not two such souls bond together too? They would mirror the joining of the human soul and God, just as mankind was made in His image, _in imago Dei_.** Perhaps they could even make their pilgrimage home _together_. It would be like returning, side by side on their horses, after another quest, to Camelot, to gently tend to each other.

When Gawain first kissed him, Lancelot realised was that it had been so very long since he had last used his body for anything other than violence. Eating, sleeping, those didn’t count because in his life they were only means to the end of violence. Any other activity on a quest didn’t count because it was always accompanied by violence. Even his time spent in the chapel didn’t count because that was always the prologue to violence, lest that day should be his last. (There was more to it, but that was always at the heart.) Laughter: laughter, he thought, might count. But when had he last laughed? Laughed and meant it, that is – no polite or embarrassed huffs, usually at something said, inadvertently or otherwise, at his expense. Not until that night, alone at last, in peace, with Gawain, and Gawain’s entire lovely face had changed suddenly, interrupting his own laugh, because he had never – they had both realised it at once – heard Lancelot genuinely laugh before, not in all the years he’d known him. Gawain had reached out, with rare tentativeness, to trace Lancelot’s suddenly curved cheek, normally so drawn; to brush with a reverent thumb-tip the little dimple in it he hadn’t known existed. He had exhaled, a whisper of awe, at the discovery, at the privilege (he would later say, curled up in Lancelot’s arms) of receiving the revelation…

When Gawain first kissed him, Lancelot felt every single earthly part of it, and he felt it with a clarity and intensity that only waxed with each passing second. The spiritual comparisons melted away – or, rather, became the background, the setting; or, perhaps, wove through it, the earthly and spiritual building upon each other, like the gloss around a text…*** they became the atmosphere, as he felt his lip taken between those of Gawain, then released, then caught again, Lancelot trying his best to remember, periodically, to do the same back, when he was given chance. Every single time, his whole world crystallised in that moment of a moment. The entirety of Creation felt held, firmly but with infinite tenderness, between Gawain’s lips, a little chapped from spending so much time out of doors. Gawain mirrored his kissing as he fed his fingers through Lancelot’s hair, at which Lancelot seemed to feel his whole body sigh. He couldn’t decide where to put his hands: his two hands, enough to defend all the Britons; several hundred short to touch all he desired of Gawain’s beautiful body. He began in his hair, and then moved to his waist, and pulled him closer, and hugged him there, and every time their bodies accidentally drifted apart – not a finger’s breadth! – he pulled them flush against each other again. He held his face, thrilling at the evening roughness of his cheeks beneath his fingertips.

When Gawain first kissed him, Lancelot knew that he would never forget even a second of it. From the start, when Gawain had gazed at him searchingly – weighing the risk, as one had to, as a man kissing a man – finally deciding to chance it and taking down the last of his guard; to its eventual end when they had needed to look at each other, to assess what, if anything, had changed – to take in with their eyes, as they had with their lips and still-roaming hands, their new lover: or perhaps not so new… it would all be written out, in a language all of his own, _littera inintelligibilis_ , in the pages of his memory.**** No matter how many more times Lancelot was blessed with its repetition, and no number would be enough, the first time would remain always as clear as if he were still experiencing it. Perhaps it might become a palimpsest on his soul, layered over with subsequent experience, emboldened and underlined with later kisses, weft into a luxuriant texture, but through it all would always blaze, in dazzling gold, the first.

**Author's Note:**

> * ‘Benedictus benedicat': 'may the Blessed One give a blessing'. I'm sorry this is literally just pulled from the grace they say before everyone goes wild at a formal dinner in college. That's vaguely sacrilegious. Sounds neat though and I've not learnt Latin yet so it's all I've got sorry.
> 
> ** 'in imago Dei': 'in God's image'. From Genesis, which says God made mankind in his image and likeness.
> 
> On laughter, see Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. (It's So Good)
> 
> *** 'the gloss around a text’: Medieval (and Renaissance) Bibles (and other important texts) had little tiny blocks of the Biblical text in the middle, surrounded by masses and masses of notes and interpretation, called the gloss. Honestly, give it a quick Google, it's wild. Anyway, the gloss was as integral a part of the text as the words it explains. And the word text comes from the Latin textus, which comes from a verb meaning 'to weave' -- partly because of processes like these, and the way texts become woven into the minds of individuals and of whole cultures, as well as being woven with other texts. I just think it’s neat.jpeg
> 
> **** 'littera inintelligibilis': 'unintelligible note/wisdom'. honestly love the phrase just say it out loud it's great fun. Some people, like Thomas Aquinas, wrote their notes (when they even needed to take them -- they had bafflingly well-trained memories) in a kind of shorthand that only they could read, which they'd then dictate to scribes to write out clearly.


End file.
